BRUCE, Blanche Kelso, a Senator from Mississippi; born in slavery near Farmville, Prince
Edward County, Va., March 1, 1841; was tutored by his masters son; left his
master at the beginning of the Civil War; taught school in Hannibal, Mo.; after
the war became a planter in Mississippi; member of the Mississippi Levee Board;
sheriff and tax collector of Bolivar County 1872-1875; elected as a Republican
to the United States Senate on February 4, 1874, and served from March 4, 1875,
to March 3, 1881; was the first African American to serve a full term in the
United States Senate; appointed Register of the Treasury by President James
Garfield 1881; recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia 1891-1893; again
Register of the Treasury from 1897 until his death in Washington, D.C., on
March 17, 1898; interment in Woodlawn Cemetery.

Bibliography

American National Biography;
Dictionary of American Biography; Office of History and
Preservation, Office of the Clerk,
Black Americans in Congress, 1870–2007. Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008; Mann, Kenneth Eugene. Blanche
Kelso Bruce: United States Senator Without a Constituency.
Journal of Mississippi History 38 (May 1976): 183-98; Graham,
Lawrence Otis.
The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of Americas First Black
Dynasty. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.